The end of the war is on the front page of the Spanish newspaper. My own Spanish is so incredibly limited that I've got no hope to exactly make out what is specifically said. I give Fred permission to explore my father's study completely. Already, exhaustion is cleaving into my head again, and I return to nap in my room. At this point, I'm beginning to fear this is some unforeseen consequence of using an illicit time turner and not the result of a bender and living through a war.

Through the layer of my dream, I hear George scream.

My body bolts upright, heart racing out of my chest. I throw off the sheet covering me and I rush out of the room.

I collide with Fred who has just apparated into the hallway. My shoulder rams into his chest and we slam to the ground. I rip myself off of Fred and dart into Landry's room, where George sleeps.

There he lies, thrashing in the bed. I run over beside him, digging through the bag. In our haste to save Fred, I didn't pack any draught for dreamless sleep, but there is a chance George did. I can't imagine him going anywhere without it.

"What's happening to him?" Fred asks. "Is it because of the time travel, or the pepper up potion?"

There's no easy answer. It's because Fred died, really.

I stand up and throw a charm at George, "Rennervate."

George gasps like he is surfacing from the sea surrounding Azkaban, clutching his chest. He coughs, sucking in air one after the other. Fred brushes past me, moving around to stand over George's bed. George blinks his wide eyes up at his brother.

"I..." Fred chokes, then he looks back at me.

Without another word, Fred collapses on the bed. George rolls upright, joining his brother on the edge of the mattress. He places a hand on Fred's shoulder, each finger wrapping around Fred's muscles. I touched that part of him yesterday. It's hard not to focus on what it felt like beneath my own hand.

"What was it this time?" I ask, since George likes to talk about them.

His eyes look at me, wet.

Fuck. That one again.

"It's probably because we saw Landry yesterday," George explains. "I won't get into specifics."

I recognize the look on Fred's face. He's flushed straight through his forehead, his eyes darting around the room and his shoulders raising. The same anger he had when Landry tried to blow us up in Diagon Alley.

"So this..." Fred wipes his chin, and then shoves his hand in his pocket. "This is a typical Thursday, innit?"

"More or less," George shrugs. "Less when I'm with Angelina."

It feels wrong, being a part of this conversation. Completely and utterly entirely wrong. So, I retreat from the room, my footsteps soft on the tile. No creaking floorboards to betray my movements. I shut the door behind me.

The villa feels quiet.

There are no floorboards to creak beneath my feet. I put all of my weight onto the banister, waiting to hear the metal groan. No sound comes. I stalk the rooms, flicking up my wand as I pass candles to make the flames roar, just so there is something to hear. Even if it burns the villa down.

In the lounge, I stare at the painting of the Burke House. The sun is setting, a soft orange glow dripping into the grass, like in all of these years the paint hasn't dried. The Burke House belongs to my mother's eldest brother, who wasn't a Death Eater. Her younger brother was a Snatcher, fined what he collected during the war. One of the lights is on in the Burke House, one upstairs. I wonder if the room was hers when she was a child.

The villa isn't mine technically. It's a marital asset, one passed down through my maternal line. Before it belonged to my mother, a Burke, it belonged to her mother, a Carlisle. I do not know who my great grandmother was before she became a Carlisle, though my mother had told me when I was little. I can trace the entire Travers line back to the 1300s, but not hers. While it was never said explicitly, the house would be mine upon marriage, but provided I married the right person. This villa belongs to Larkin Flint.

I can't stand where she might have.

We aren't supposed to be seen. The invisibility cloak is in the bag upstairs, in George's room. I cannot bear to interrupt. I stare out the window. The sun is not quite at the horizon yet here. Still, the light from the lounge is brighter than that of the patio. I can see my reflection in the glass. She wouldn't look like me, Larkin Flint. I tell myself that. I promise myself that I am not her, even though I am in her home. Even though she is in my body alongside me, pressing up against my skin. She's always been there, invisible to everyone but me.

Eventually I cannot bare it. I open the doors and slip outside.

There are stairs up to my parents' balcony, which I climb. Never as a child was I allowed up here. Once, I tried to hide up here while Landry and I played hide-and-seek, and my father boxed my ears when he found me. When I sit down, pressed against the stucco where I hid all those years ago, I try to imagine that little girl. No pensieve could do the memory justice. No time turner could bring me back and see her, and understand how she felt.

A glass door slides open beside me. I glance up, watching as Fred walks out. I brush a tear from my eye and curl my legs into my chest, resting my chin on my knees. Beside me, Fred sits. One leg stuck out far in front of us, the other tucked in close to him. He reaches over, cupping my cheek and brushing my hair out of my face. He has a callus on his thumb, I feel it's rough edge on me. He lives, he lives, he lives.

"George uh..." Fred swallows, before looking off at the hills in the distance. "He's taken the draught."

I nod, stretching my shoulders back and sitting upright.

"He said he'll wake up in six months," Fred snorts. "Reckon he'll smell just as bad as usual wearing the same clothes for half a year?"

I let out a soft chuckle, force its way out of me.

"He's not in a right way, I think," Fred says, as if I haven't noticed that for the past two years.

"You think you'd be doing well if he died?" I ask, cocking my head to the side.

Fred doesn't answer, not even to joke. With his index finger, he circles the callus on his thumb. I don't remember if he had it before the battle. Already his body is changing in new ways. In my head for so long, he was permanently frozen in that moment, like the laugh that was etched on his face when he finally died.

"Just you and me then?" he asks.

I stiffen. He catches it before I can shift, drawing his hand back. Still, I let go of my legs, sitting upright. I press my back against the wall, feeling the stucco against me.

"I'd like to take the draught too," I admit.

"Why are you both so excited to cut our holiday short?" Fred rolls his eyes. "You haven't seen me for two years, and already you're both jumping up and down at the opportunity to spend another two years without me."

"It won't feel like two years," I correct. It will feel like blinking. More immediate than apparating, less disorienting too. The ticking of a second hand on a clock.

"We can treat this like it's our honeymoon," Fred says. "A long and wonderful honeymoon."

"One I can't leave," I say, gesturing around. "I know this villa is lovely to you but all I can do is imagine my mother here. Er, I guess I imagine how much she isn't here. It's not a happy place for me."

I imagine my father showing up to catch the little girl who once summered here. I imagine Marcus showing up to do the same to our daughter. I imagine myself not stopping either of them.

Fred moves to put his hand on mine and I pull away. No, I can't do this. I can't watch his face drop. The disappointment.

It's better this way.

"You want to leave me here alone for six months?" Fred asks.

"I brought enough-"

"I'm not sleeping away the rest of my life!" Fred shouts.

"Without George, you wouldn't have a rest of your life!" I swallow.

Without me, he could have had one. He doesn't know, and neither does George, but I do. My redirection caused all of this. The blow back of my brother, my inability to just do the right thing, to protect us, to protect him. He died by my hand and I lived, and what did I do with my life? I ruined the person I became for him. I threw her away, let her die with him.

I fucking cheated on him the day of his funeral.

Fred tries to grab my hand, but I pull back.

"I can't do this," I stand up, wiping my hands on my trousers. As I step away Fred snatches my wrist and I rip it out of his grip. "No, Fred, I can't! We... I hadn't thought about... I can't do this."

"Then leave me and see if I care!" he shouts.

"I am!" I shout back. "I am leaving you."

My lip quivers. Fred's mouth starts to go slack.

"For six months though, right?" he asks.

I press my lips together. Carefully, I cross my arms over my chest.

"For six months?" he repeats, eyes wide.

He reaches for me again and I take another step back. Slowly, I start to shake my head.

"You said you weren't going to do this again," Fred exclaims. "You said you were going to marry me."

"And you died," I say. "Two years ago. Hundreds of days ago you died. I'm not that person anymore. If we don't break up now, we will sometime soon. We always do. And by then you'll hate me and I'll lose you forever for the infinitieth time, and I just can't do that to us again."

Fred shakes his head, turning back to the hills. When I close my eyes, just for a second, I imagine that I'm there. At the horizon, where the sun is going to set. As physically far away from Fred as I can be while I can still see him.

"You saved my life," Fred says, his voice calm. "You've done an impossible thing, and yet you've decided that loving me forever is more impossible."

"I will love you forever," I correct. "You won't love me."

"That's not true-"

"What's my job?" I ask him, making eye contact with him. His eyes seem to shine. "Where do I live? What's my favourite place on Diagon Alley to grab dinner, keeping in mind that Flemish's closed after the war? What can you tell me about the person I am today?"

Then it comes. His face, falling. He doesn't know. Of course he doesn't. Fred's not stupid; he would catch up to my life. Eventually, he'd fit into it somewhere. Just, eventually, he'd realize that I am not the girl he fell in love with. In fact, I'm a girl he rather despises.

"You're still the kind of person who wants to do what's right and can't figure out how," Fred decides. "Leaving me, you're doing that again. For what fucking reason you think this is the right thing to do, you're wrong. I'm not going to stop loving you. Let me prove it."

No. I won't.

"I'll see you in six months," I say.

I take the outside stairs down, unwilling to cross again into my parents' bedroom. He doesn't chase after me. It makes it easier to take the draught of living death and crawl into my bed.

~~~~~

WOOF. Big WOOF.

Also, I might start updating biweekly, since I have quite a few chapters banked! We will see how the next week goes. I always worry about putting out too much and then having to break for a hiatus haha.